Sets the role of the user.

This will remove the previous roles of the user and assign the user the new one. You can set the role to an empty string and it will remove all of the roles from the user.

$role string Required

Role name.

File: wp-includes/class-wp-user.php. View all references

public function set_role( $role ) {
	if ( 1 === count( $this->roles ) && current( $this->roles ) == $role ) {
		return;
	}

	foreach ( (array) $this->roles as $oldrole ) {
		unset( $this->caps[ $oldrole ] );
	}

	$old_roles = $this->roles;

	if ( ! empty( $role ) ) {
		$this->caps[ $role ] = true;
		$this->roles         = array( $role => true );
	} else {
		$this->roles = array();
	}

	update_user_meta( $this->ID, $this->cap_key, $this->caps );
	$this->get_role_caps();
	$this->update_user_level_from_caps();

	foreach ( $old_roles as $old_role ) {
		if ( ! $old_role || $old_role === $role ) {
			continue;
		}

		/** This action is documented in wp-includes/class-wp-user.php */
		do_action( 'remove_user_role', $this->ID, $old_role );
	}

	if ( $role && ! in_array( $role, $old_roles, true ) ) {
		/** This action is documented in wp-includes/class-wp-user.php */
		do_action( 'add_user_role', $this->ID, $role );
	}

	/**
	 * Fires after the user's role has changed.
	 *
	 * @since 2.9.0
	 * @since 3.6.0 Added $old_roles to include an array of the user's previous roles.
	 *
	 * @param int      $user_id   The user ID.
	 * @param string   $role      The new role.
	 * @param string[] $old_roles An array of the user's previous roles.
	 */
	do_action( 'set_user_role', $this->ID, $role, $old_roles );
}